Main navigation

Jesse

Being homeless in San Francisco is weird as hell. There are a lot of resources available, but they’re just completely inaccessible to most people who need them. Everything feels stagnant. Even if someone tries to engage with some of these resources, like homeless youth organisations, it’s impossible for them to get anywhere because of obstacles these organisations create (and refuse to address). Then they’re scolded at for being homeless by these very same organisations who ask their clients for patience and gratitude. There is no accountability from the people who manage these organisations, so change is made to feel unlikely. The ever-repressed voices of homeless people go unheard. Also the staff are paid in tide-pods, get no training, and are overworked or burnt-out a week after starting. How are we meant to engage when the staff who are meant to be providing us with these resources, are getting exploited?

The city is also full of self-proclaimed ‘progressive’ allies who congratulate themselves on how they support immigrants, homeless people etc, but if you were to go up to one of them and say “Hi, my name is Jesse, I’m undocumented and homeless.” They wouldn’t know what to do under their veneer of sympathy and liberal ‘well-meaning’. I really feel like they just want to pontificate to their friends about how much they wish things were different. It’s just posturing. It sucks that we’re surrounded by these drifters, and asked to congratulate them.

The youth shelter is across the street from a Tesla building. Where rich people shop for their conscientious, environmentally-friendly embodiment of conspicuous consumption, while kids across the street are spending 13 hours a day in a mice-infested room with 40 other people. Also the staff are transphobic and sexist. And once I got in trouble for ‘hate speech’ for wearing a ‘Nazi Punks Fuck Off’ shirt. I’m Jewish. Peak liberalism.

My favorite archetype of these patronising folk, are the older gay guys in the Castro that try to ‘save’ you, and say “Oh no you’re a gay runaway youth who escaped to San Francisco, and now you’re on the streets. Here, take a couple dollars.”